In 1978, the library and map collection of the American Geographical Society (AGSL) was transferred from New York City to UW-Milwaukee. The archival collections dating back to the Society’s founding in 1851, however, remained in New York until February 1, 2011, when they arrived at the AGSL under the terms of a deposit agreement between the Society and the University. This archive, consisting of approximately 540 cubic feet of material, contains documents relating to all the great names in American exploration and the larger field of geography from the mid Nineteenth century through most of the Twentieth. This includes log books of early Arctic expeditions and other AGS-sponsored expedition records, the papers of Robert F. Peary (who also served as President of the Society), the American flag carried by Robert F. Byrd on his 1929 flight to the South Pole, and correspondence with such individuals as Field Marshal Sir Edmund Allenby, George Kennan (the earlier), Franklin D. Roosevelt (a councilor) and William H. Seward. Having the AGS archives re-united with the AGSL will be a great boon to researchers and students, for example much documentary evidence relating to the AGS Library’s photographic collection, now being scanned for online presentation with the aid of an NEH grant, resides in these archives. The archives is in considerable disorder, with large numbers of disintegrating documents kept in disintegrating folders, all without any current usable finding aids.

The Museum seeks to catalog approximately 16,500 objects from the Museum's Ephemera Collection. These objects document the day-to-day life of New Yorkers over the last 300 years with the bulk of the materials dating to late 19th and early 20th centuries. The ephemera comprise a variety of formats, including print material such as menus, invitations, pamphlets, and handbills; textiles such as pennants, sashes, ties, and scarves; and three-dimensional artifacts such as badges, buttons, children's identification tags, and promotional items. The subject of the material encompasses political campaigns and elections; social events such as concerts, lectures, and balls; civic celebrations such as bridge openings, subway openings, and centennials; institutions such as volunteer fire departments, churches, and schools; personal identification such as passports, licenses, and citizenship papers; retail developments, including trade cards, advertisements, bills, and receipts; and materials related to political movements such as Prohibition and women's suffrage. Many objects were originally owned by or related to influential New Yorkers, such as the Belmont, Havemeyer, Whitney, and Livingston families. Materials in the Ephemera Collection are encyclopedic in their range, but geographically focused on New York City and its immediate area.

In the process of our 20-year collecting initiative of material to document the role of women in military service over all time, we have accumulated a singular collection of archival documentation, exhibition scripts, photographs, manuscripts, oral histories, biographies and autobiographies, screphemera, some related to accessioned objects, but much of it without access points. This project also entails surveying collections in other Smithsonian units for relevant undocumented material. Highlights: WWI Photos, records, certificates, and personal memorabilia of the first women inducted into the US Navy (Yeoman (F), 1917-1920); WWI records of hundreds of uniformed women volunteers assembled by National Society of the Colonial Dames of America members who served in diverse secular, religious, and military organizations (1914-1923), and who represent the thousands of other women in their unique military service); Records, oral history and large collection of documents of the first US woman to achieve the rank of general (1930s-1980s); Collection of a woman in the UN Relief Agency (UNRA) in the 1940s; POW documentation of woman flight surgeon captured in Iraq, 1991; "Rosie the Riviter" documentation; Letters, diaries, oral histories, scrapbooks, and ephemera of military women during the past 60 years.

The collection is made up of 10 and 7 inch reels of 1/4 inch magnetic audio tape recorded at KUAC Public Broadcast radio station at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The tapes are from weekly radio series covering various topics of cultural and local significance. The major series are: Chinook which dealt with Alaska Native issues through the era of implementation of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The series includes interviews with important Native leaders, traditional music, and Elders conferences. Conversations was an in-depth interview program covering a diverse range of guests and topics including: national to local politicians, artists, musicians, authors, and eclectic people from homesteaders to dog-mushers. Northern Storyteller featured readings of northern themed books aimed at younger audience members in the K-8 range. It included materials written throughout the Circumpolar North often featuring authors reading their own works. KUAC news master tapes were compiled daily and included state, regional, and local news. The collection also contains locally produced one-off programs of local musicians, an a locally produced variety program.

City, Borough, Neighborhood, Home: Mapping Brooklyn's 20th-Century Urban Identity comprises maps covering the period from 1898, when the City of Brooklyn became a borough through consolidation with New York City, to 1999. By tracking the physical, ethnic and institutional transformation of Brooklyn over the course of the 20th century, maps reveal the complex ways in which the borough became a deeply intertwined part of NYC, while still forging an internationally recognized identity of its own. Brooklyn's history offers important lessons about changing notions of the city, urban redevelopment, public-private partnerships, immigration and community building. This significant collection will place Brooklyn at the center of debates about urban history in both a national and global context. Included are political, topographical, transit, utility and property maps richly illustrative of the changing landscape of 20th-century Brooklyn. The majority were created by local entities -- government, neighborhood associations, preservation organizations, businesses -- and are rare or unique to our library. Only 5% of an initial sampling of the collection had records in OCLC. These maps form an important complement to our archives from the same period, as well as a rich collection of 19th-century maps cataloged with support from a 2009 CLIR Hidden Collections grant. When cataloged, they will be invaluable resources for scholars of American urban, social, political and economic history.

This project made available to scholars the hidden, uncataloged working personal collections of six significant 20th-century American printmakers' own artwork. Two of these are well-known, internationally important wood engravers and book illustrators, Lynd Ward (1905-1985), whose influential “wordless novels” are widely regarded as among the earliest American graphic novels, and the preeminent printmaker John DePol (1913-2004). The project will also make available the artwork of four highly talented but underappreciated women printmakers of the same period: Louise Miller Boyer (1890-1976); Helen King Boyer (b. 1919); Marguerite Kumm (1902-1992); and Kathleen Spagnolo (b. 1919). The materials to be cataloged are mostly prints, drawings, and printmaking matrices, including the woodblocks for Ward’s earliest graphic novels. Georgetown is the primary repository for Ward, the Boyers, Kumm, and possibly Spagnolo, and has significant holdings of DePol. Several of the collections, notably Ward, are complemented by substantial archives of correspondence and manuscripts. These artists often engaged in experimental printmaking techniques, and these collections present such a substantial body of material, with preliminary drawings, proofs, states, blocks or plates, and finished prints or books, that they are ideal not only for the scholarly study of the artists’ working methods, but also for use in teaching.

For this project, LACMA proposes to appraise and process approximately 523 linear feet of records from circa 1954 through the early 1990s. The largest portion of the targeted records comprises general exhibition files created by various museum departments before the creation of the Exhibition Programs Department in the late 1990s, consolidating many exhibition activities. The correspondence, photographs, installation drawings and other records document the planning of exhibition installation, hiring of specialized staff, and creation of publications. Exhibitions documented in these records include The Arts of lndia and Nepal: The Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection (1967), the landmark traveling exhibition The Treasures of King Tutankhamen (at LACMA in 1978), and The Avant-Garde in Russia: 1910-1930 New Perspectives (1980-1981). The project will also target records from the South and Southeast Asian Art, Japanese Art, Prints and Drawings, and Modern and Contemporary Art Departments. In some cases, these records dovetail with the general exhibition records, including curatorial correspondence regarding exhibitions, but also include other department activities including art acquisitions and scholarly publication.

Over the past eight years the Fales Library has amassed one of the largest collections of materials relating to the new field of food studies at any academic library. Through donations and select acquisitions, the collection now numbers more than 55,000 volumes and includes monographs, pamphlets, serials, government documents, brochures, printed ephemera, manuscript notebooks, and other materials that comprehensively document American food culture in all its aspects from the mid-18th century to the present and European food from 1500 to the present. This collection is the only one with this scope in the New York metropolitan area and unique in the nation. It is used heavily by students and faculty at NYU, by scholars from other universities, and also by journalists, free-lance authors and others interested in the culture of food in our history. The collection comprises the personal libraries of: Cecily Brownstone, who was the AP syndicated food writer for 39 years and a close friend of James Beard; Dalia Carmel, a major private collector; Andrew F. Smith, the noted historian of food; Georg and Jenifer Lang, owners of Café des Artistes; Shizuko Yamamoto, who invented the macrobiotic diet; and Betty Fussell, Delores Custer, Sara Moulton, Doris Lesem, Shiela Lukins, and many other important figures in the food world. And the organizational collections of: the Ladies' Home Journal; The James Beard Foundation; and Gourmet Magazine.

The PA German textile and clothing collections in this collaborative project are a rich record of this southeastern Pennsylvania immigrant group that settled the state in the late seventeenth century and who continued as a distinct group through the early twentieth century. William Penn recruited German weavers to come to Penn’s Wood because of their reputation as accomplished weavers. Early fiber production was done on the home farm with linen and wool the primary fibers. The laborious process was an integral part of the farm family’s activities for both men and women throughout the year. The textile collections have functional textiles such as woven coverlets, bedding, tablecloths and grain bags along with decorative work like samplers and show towels. Manuscripts such as weaver’s account books, diaries with fiber and weaving activities and estate inventories of valuable bedding along with tools such as spinning wheels and looms will provide scholars with increased understanding of the significance of early textile production to the PA German community. Mid nineteenth century textile treasures from the collections include finely made quilts--a tradition that was Anglo-American originally and became a popular women’s textile art among the PA Germans. Clothing artifacts depict the similarities and differences of the Schwenkfelder and Mennonite religious sects within the PA German culture and the reaction to cultural changes over time to the broader society.

The 31 archival collections proposed for cataloging through this project are part of the Free Library's Children's Literature Research Collection (CLRC) and represent works from 20th-century children's authors and illustrators. The collections range in prominence from national award-winners to local authors of regional significance including Katherine Milhous and Frances Lichten, Marguerite de Angeli, Jane Flory, Lucille Wallower, Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, Aliki Brandenberg, Elizabeth Ripley, Elizabeth Olds, Scott O'Dell, William Steig, Marcia Brown, Hendrik Willem van Loon, Eulalie Osgood Grover, Corydon Bell, Jim Arnosky, Donald E. Cooke, and Kristin Hunter Lattany. The collections vary in size and contain original paintings, drawings, dummies, mockups, correspondence, scrapbooks, notebooks, galley proofs, manuscripts, photos, clippings, artifacts, storyboards, diaries, dolls, tapestries, and model houses. The individuals are critically acclaimed, representing a collective 16 Caldecott Medals or Honors and 14 Newbery Awards or Honors, and many of them lived and worked in the Pennsylvania region. The collections outline the development of the individual artists as well as the field of children's literature during the 20th century. Many of the collections were obtained by Carolyn Field, the Free Library's Coordinator of Work with Children from 1953 to 1983 and a critical figure in the development of children's librarianship and the field of children's literature.

The Architecture and Design Collection comprehensively and uniquely documents the history of the built environment of Southern California. The project will address 240 uncatalogued archives. These are the papers of individuals-- architects, landscape architects, designers, and a critic-- and the records of design firms. In some cases we hold the extant archive of the individual or firm, others are partial. Familiar names among these include, F.L. Wright, Esther McCoy, Case Study houses, Thornton Ladd, Carleton Winslow, A.E. Hanson, William Pereira, Charles Moore, and Barton Myers. Materials date from the late 19th through the late-20th century and document the responses of architects to the climate, landscape, and early architecture of California influenced by Mexican and Spanish sources. Archives document early and late Modernism, urban planning, and experiments in low-cost and system-built housing. These and many other topics can be traced through multiple archives, which comprise drawings, documents, photographs, audio-visual, artifacts, and models. Six frequently used archives will be fully cataloged as part of the project: John Byers papers, 1919-1966; Roland Coate papers, 1922-1958; Rex Lotery papers, 1970-1999; Maynard Lyndon papers, 1936-1991; John Elgin Woolf papers, 1938-1980, and the Walter S. White papers, 1939-1994. These six archives comprise circa 36 linear feet of documents and photographs, and over 6,000 drawings.

Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game Annual Management Reports, 1959-1994: this geographically based series compiled data in a cumulative manner for catch, escapement, economic factors, and fishery management policies for each regional fishery. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Annual Narratives, 1960s-present: annual reports originating from the various wildlife refuges in Alaska, reporting on projects and status of each refuge. Chock-full of photos, they are a rich source of history regarding each refuge. Exxon Valdez oil spill, raw footage, 1989-1991: Comprised of raw footage of the early days of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, its subsequent clean-up, shoreline evaluations, and many other government-led activities related to the spill. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Shoreline Surveys, 1989-1993: Surveys conducted by interagency groups to assess oiling conditions in the spill area. Bureau of Land Management Wild and Scenic Rivers photograph and file collection, 1908-: Multi-agency collection of original files and slide photos documenting selection of the rivers for inclusion, including all candidate rivers. Environment & Natural Resources Inst., Historical photo collection, pre-statehood to 1970s: Many photos are related to particular industries important to Alaska and are rich in cultural documentation. Alaska Climate Center Ice Records, 1972-2004, including ice records and ice analysis. ARLIS backlog: 44,000 items, but only the agency series are under consideration.

The Little Literary Magazine Archives feature eleven diverse poetry magazine archives. Representative of small press poetry publishing across the United States from 1960 to 2010, the various archives are composed of literary letters, manuscripts, notebooks, business and production records, and publishing ephemera. The magazines represented, their locations, and the extent of publishing life are: Fire Exit (Boston, 1968-1975); The Wormwood Review (Stockton, CA, 1960-1999); Chain (Philadelphia, 1994-2005); Manroot (San Francisco, 1969-1981); Drafting (Baltimore, 2004-2005); Boss (New York, 1966-1979); Buckle / Buckle & (Buffalo, 1977-1982 / 1998-2006); Osiris (Schenectady, NY, 1972-2010); Lost & Found Times (Columbus, OH, 1975-2005); Score (Oakland, CA, 1983-1990); and First Intensity (Lawrence, KS, 1993-2007). These magazines represent different socio-aesthetic communities from Feminist poetry to academic avant garde poetry to verbo-visual poetry and have served the careers of poets as different as Susan Howe and Charles Bukowski. The Little Literary Magazine Archives document fifty years of poetic history, and the cataloging of this collection will immediately impact scholarship in the field of post-WWII American Poetry. This archival collection is supported by the more than 9,000 twentieth-century and twenty-first-century entrepreneurial poetry magazine titles held in the Poetry Collection.

The last 3 decades of the 20th century saw extraordinary transformation in African-American history and culture, a time when the Black Power Movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the Black Studies Movement all came of age. These and other social movements coincided with the greater integration of blacks into mainstream America, and the development of numerous black organizations--political, economic and cultural. These aspects of black life have emerged as growing areas of interest, ripe subjects for the continuing development of new scholarship. The 12 hidden collections selected for cataloging provide greater insight into black literature and literary movements, black labor movements, and civil and human rights struggles, including the Civil Rights Movement. They document the lives and careers of 5 writer-activists, 3 scholar-activists, 3 social activists, and 1 activist organization, providing resources essential for studying their lives, work, and political, social and cultural activism. Taken together, these collections document aspects of the Civil Rights movement as well as the roots of the post-1960s movements that are the focus of this project. The collections include the professional papers and photographs of Maya Angelou, Jane Cortez, Quincy Troupe, Alice Childress, James Baldwin, John Henrik Clarke, Lawrence Reddick, Geraldine Wilson, Vicki Garvin, Benjamin McLaurin, Thomas R. Jones and records of the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression.

The Perham Collection of Early Electronics preserved rare books and ephemera, trade manuals, personal papers and archives, 1200 photographs, and 2500 electronics devices from some of the earliest commercial ventures in electronics in the Western U.S. and a nascent Silicon Valley, from the 1890s to 1960. The Collection, received largely unprocessed from the Perham Foundation in 2003, augments existing History San Jose (HSJ) museum and archival collections that document the evolution of the region and the intersection of technology and society. This project will adapt HSJ's object-oriented online museum software (PastPerfect) to provide access to five manuscript collections within the Perham Collection, and relate these to objects, books, and photographs already in the system: 1)The Lee de Forest papers, which comprise the largest collection documenting this award-winning radio and motion-picture inventor, 2)Research notes and correspondence of Jane Morgan, author of "Electronics in the West", a treasure trove of information on early electronics pioneers on the West Coast, 3(Rare materials from Federal Telegraph Company (1909-1929), one of Silicon Valley's earliest successful start-ups 4)Engineer and inventor Harold Elliott’s papers, an early Federal manager, and 5)the Perham Historical Files, a collection of ephemera, notes, manuscripts, and other items pertaining to hundreds of people, companies, and technical developments.

In 1935, Thornwell Jacobs, president of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, conceived of an idea that would evolve into an historical curiosity of international scope eventually finding its way into the Guinness Book of World Records. While writing his book, The New Science and the Old Religion, Jacobs became aware that “at no period in history do we have complete and accurate information on any single generation of mankind.” It became his mission to create and preserve a slice of life in the 1935 period of American history. To this end, he persuaded Orson Munn, editor of Scientific American to assist in cooperating and making public what would become The Crypt of Civilization. In addition he hired Thomas Kemmwood Peters to preserve the materials in the crypt through the new technique of microfilming. The fully documented orchestration of the Crypt of Civilization provides a virtual blueprint and script for the project through its papers which include photographs, list, recordings, films, publications, and copious correspondence that document the life cycle of the project. The documents include all letters of procurement for items to be contained in the crypt. It also contains printed programs, brochures, magazines and newspaper articles about the project.

The Foundations project (Project) includes materials relating to dance performance, theory, and education in 22 collections held by seven institutions (Repositories): Arizona State University (ASU), Dance Notation Bureau (DNB), Library of Congress (LOC), Museum of Performance & Design (MPD), The Ohio State University (OSU), Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Pillow), and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Several collections are from individuals: modern dance pioneers Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn; Shawn's associates Jess Meeker and Barton Mumaw; second generation modern dancer and choreographer Kenneth Rinker; postmodern dancer Robert Ellis Dunn; film dancer Marge Champion; mime specialists Sandra Hughes and Robert Post; ballet dancer and company director Michael Smuin; scholar and ethnologist Allegra Fuller Snyder; critic and writer Janice Ross; Dalcroze eurhythmics teacher John Colman; Dalcroze biographer and musicologist Irwin Spector; and dance notation creator Rudolph Laban. Other collections are from organizations significant to dance: the San Francisco Ballet, the Dance Notation Bureau, and the Dalcroze Society of America. There is also a collection of performance videotapes from artistically innovative West Coast dance groups such as AXIS Dance Company, the Lily Cai Chinese Dance Company, the Joe Goode Performance Group, the San Francisco Butoh Festival, the San Francisco Jazz’s Tap-Jazz Summit, and Theatre Flamenco.

Johanna Spector (1915-2008) was a world-renowned ethnomusicologist, who authored several books and made a vast number of contributions to encyclopedias and professional journals. This archive of papers, photographs, films and slides are the product of her research on Jewish culture in communities in Yemen, India, Egypt and Azerbaijan. Transcripts of notations, draft of lectures, research notes, photographs and footage taken during her travels, papers relating to her films, and rough cuts of her four documentaries shed light on the hidden treasures of these nearly extinct communities. Notably, the archive also tells the unknown personal story of Johanna Spector, a Holocaust survivor who grew up in Latvia, through diaries, correspondence and her personal account of deportation from Ghetto, through camps, through liberation. With the cataloging of this archive, scholars will have access to rich materials, among the highlights of which are an unfinished paper on Biblical cantillation in Cochin, India (1968-69); research notes, photos, artifacts, correspondence, and reminiscences from India; research on the music and culture of Yemen (1953) and Azerbijan; an unpublished paper on “Similarities in Armenian and Jewish Music” (1997); unpublished lecture notes from a series organized by Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History on the people of Cochin, Shanwar Telis, Yemen and the Samaritans (1995).

The Museum's Library & Archives houses one of the most significant collections of aviation related research materials in the world and holds the third largest collection of its kind in the United States.From the dawn of powered flight to the space age, Southern California has maintained an important role in shaping the nation's aviation and aerospace industry. San Diego is the birthplace of naval aviation, and was a critically important contributor to the nation's WWII defense effort. Today, its defense industry continues to develop new concepts in flight. The Museum's archival and special collections include the corporate records of significant San Diego-based aerospace companies, such as Pacific Southwest Airlines, Ryan Aeronautical, and Consolidated Aircraft Corporation; a number of aerospace pioneers, including T. Claude Ryan, Ed Heinemann, George Hallett, William T. and Benjamin Douglas Thomas (Thomas Brothers); and famous aviators such as Jacqueline Cochran, Helen Richey, Charles Lindbergh, Richard E. Byrd, and Bernt Balchen. The “Increasing Access to Our Aerospace Heritage” project will raise awareness of these historically important hidden collections by providing broader and easier access online. For this project, the staff will create finding guides for 186 archival collections of individuals, three organizational records from San Diego-based corportions (Ryan, Consolidated Aircraft Corporation/Convair, and Pacific Southwest Airlines), and 144 photo albums.

Overall focus is the Mid-South, esp. race relations in Memphis, this Delta region's "capital." Period is Civil War through Civil Rights era. Specific Collections include - Rhodes: Brownsville KKK, 1960s-1970s; Shelby Foote (personal documents/memorabilia of novelist/Civil War historian). U of M: Sanitation Strike (150 interviews after 1968 strike and Martin Luther King assassination). MPLIC: Page/Lenox (labor organizer/former mayor of Lenox); Maxine Smith/NAACP (fight for racial equality, esp. in Memphis, 1958-1995); Frank Tobey (race relations while Memphis mayor, 1953-1955); Venson/Memphis Cotton Makers' Jubilee (event programs/correspondence since 1935 founding of African-American parallel to Memphis Cotton Carnival); Cultural Resources Survey/Vollentine-Evergreen Neighborhood/Everett R. Cook Oral History Program/Memphis Civic Clubs (development of Memphis neighborhoods); African-American Life in Memphis (contributions to Memphis, including businesses and churches); Beale St. ('Chitlin Circuit' clubs, 1930s-1960s). NCRM: Symbols of Segregation (signage, KKK paraphernalia, recordings, artwork, clippings file); Voices of Freedom (73 oral history interviews); Freedom Awards (annual ceremony recognizing civil and human rights leaders). Stax: From the Soul (materials on Soulsville, USA neighborhood, home to many Stax musicians); Here and Now (photographs/interviews with former Stax musicians); Club Paradise/Club Handy (two prominent Memphis blues venues).

USC's archives provide extensive information about architects whose contributions to mid-century design are just beginning to be more fully recognized. The collections document historically significant residential, commercial, and landscape projects by architects who crafted L.A.'s distinctive look at the height of its 1940-1990 building boom. Their work shaped international design, vernacular modernism, and characteristic features of the 20th-century U.S. built environment like suburbs. The largest archives in our project are those of Edward H. Fickett (1916-1999) and landscape architect Emmet L. Wemple (1921-1996). Totaling 550 and 215 linear feet respectively, they offer nearly complete overviews of the architects' work and feature thousands of rolled and flat floor plans, sections, and elevations. Their project files include contracts, correspondence with clients, general and engineering specifications, geotechnical investigations, invoices, cost estimates, and permits. The collections preserve a wide variety of slides, photographs, and presentation drawings--most of which are color--as well as finish samples, artwork, and three-dimensional models. Forgotten Modern also includes the archives of William Pereira--who designed San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid and airports in Bangkok, Jakarta, Rio de Janeiro, and Washington, D.C.--and other mid-century Southern California architects, such as Tolbert Virgil Anthony, Samuel Lunden, Carl Maston, Cliff May, and Burnett C. Turner.

Appalshop Archive: The collection contains approximately 500 16mm film and audio elements recorded by members of the Appalshop Film Workshop. Content includes interviews and footage which document aspects of life in Appalachia including coal camp life, union events, music events, craftspeople, social and religious traditions and practices. The elements in the collection include camera original picture elements, original audiotape elements, and workprint (picture and sound elements that were edited to run in sync). While the titles for these elements are written on the cans and boxes in which they are housed, the archive will need to research and, when possible, playback selected elements in order to deepen available metadata. Pine Mountain Settlement School: The collection contains ten (10) 16mm films and approximately 10,000 photographs which represent the history of the School from its conception in 1912 to the present day. A National Historic Landmark, Pine Mountain Settlement School was founded in 1913 as a school for children in the commonwealth's remote southeastern mountains and a social center for surrounding communities. Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College: The Benham Lynch Collection (circa 1917 to 1958) consists of 2500 photographic images, acetate negatives, and glass plate negatives. Benham and Lynch are Harlan County coal camps begun in the second decade of the 20th century. Benham was built by the International Harvester Company and Lynch by United States Steel. At the time of their construction, they were considered "model" coal camps, in a time when housing and living conditions for Appalachian coal miners and their families varied broadly. The photography collection consists of prints and negatives taken by company photographers during the construction and early years of the two towns.

The UMKC Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) Collection features programs recorded from 1942-60 on 12,400 16” transcription discs. AFRS was established in 1942 by the US War Dept. to entertain and inform troops around the world. The AFRS edited, produced, and distributed programming from the major radio networks, from government productions and for its own productions for broadcast over the Voice of America and Armed Forces radio stations abroad. Programming includes all types of music, dramas and comedies, and educational programs. The AFRS programming documents the type of popular and cultural programming that reflected the times. The Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound transcription disc collection contains 10,362 radio and instantaneous discs chronicling the diversity of radio broadcasting, culture, and American life from the 1930s-50s. Significant musical collections include the Standard Hour radio programs, which showcase the most significant vocalists from the golden age of opera, and the Hollywood Bowl Collection, a series of symphonic programs featuring great conductors of the time. Spoken word collections include many news programs documenting issues and social attitudes surrounding America's entrance into WWII, such as the discrimination against Japanese-Americans. The collection contains discs distributed to radio stations and also many unique recordings of events and live performances. The two collections are complementary overlapping by about 400 items.

This project's focus is historic cartographic collections of Florida held in Special Collections of four major institutions: University of Florida (UF); University of Miami (UM); History Miami/Historical Museum of Southern Florida (HM); and Florida Historical Society (FHS). Collectively, the 5,335 maps in this project cover Florida from the time when it comprised most of the American South to its current status as a leading Sun Belt State. These collections represent 500 years of cartography and chart the region's development, its drastically altered topography, and its changing relationship with adjacent areas such as the Caribbean. Languages in collections include English, Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese. These maps provide data on early European exploration of North America, the colonial rivalries of Spain, France, and Britain, Indian Removal in the 1830s, and 20th century environmental dilemmas. Topics overlap across collections but in general have a unique perspective on Florida and will complement each other. As primary sources, they support research in colonial and US history, anthropology, archaeology, historic preservation, Native American studies, historical geography, urban planning, water management, travel and tourism, agriculture, and maritime and environmental studies. They will be of great use in ecology for establishing historic baselines of marsh areas, habitats and coastlines.

In February 2011, Bancroft Library completed a three-year Survey Project of it's entire manuscript holdings. The Mellon Foundation-funded survey determined each collection's scope and content; identified its preservation needs; and made recommendations as to its future arrangement & description. Bancroft Library curators and management now have a better overall understanding of the library's holdings, the priorities for processing, the strengths and gaps in the collections, an improved local collection management tool, and an established strategic plan for collection management. The collections address the political, cultural, social, and economic influences of Californians and California on the United States and the world. Included in the project are family papers; papers of politicians, activists, poets; and records documenting the social movements of the late 20th century. The collections to be processed in the course of this project date from the mid-19th c. through the 20th c. and comprise nearly 498 linear feet. These collections represent our highest priority collections and meet one or more of the following criteria: (1) they can be processed and made available to the public quickly; (2) they are very important collections that are in high demand (or would be in high demand if they were fully processed); (3) they are currently listed as "unarranged and unavailable" and can only be opened once processed.